Online social network providers allow users to register and connect with other users who share some common characteristic, such as professional interests, music interests, or general sharing of personal information. Typical social networks allow users to create profiles that other users are able to view.
As social networks expand and begin to include people with different language abilities, language differences can become an issue. This is exacerbated by the fact that many users only create a single profile in a single language. For example, an English-speaking user creates a profile in English but would greatly benefit from Chinese-speaking employers who could user the English-speaking user's skills. Without being able to read the profile of the English-speaking user, the Chinese-speaking employers will not consider the English-speaking user as a candidate.
Indeed, profiles can be the most important metadata in relevance products/services, such as recruiter search, job recommendations, and content relevance. Without an accurate profile in a second language, the ability to leverage or increase one's social network is severely diminished.
The approaches described in this section are approaches that could be pursued, but not necessarily approaches that have been previously conceived or pursued. Therefore, unless otherwise indicated, it should not be assumed that any of the approaches described in this section qualify as prior art merely by virtue of their inclusion in this section.